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Not long after Thursday practice ended, rookie Tony Cascio brought out his new remote controlled plane to fly around - inside the stadium. Eddie Ababio, Davy Armstrong, and Josh Janniere went out to watch. We got word of this and ran out to film their fun - and became part of the video. Watch till the end.

Marvell Wynne is in the prime of his soccer career. If not for soccer, he might be competing at track, given his speed. Or possibly playing baseball, since his dad was a Major League Baseball player. Or how about even a referee for the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls?

Marv blew the opening whistle Saturday at the Filmore Auditorium in the match between the RMRG United States Pummeling Service and Pikes Peak Derby Dames' Slamazons.

"I had a great time at the Roller Derby bout," Marv told ColoradoRapids.com. "The girls are great and the crowd was into it and fun. I was nervous to blow the whistle to start everything but I pulled it off. Blowing a whistle is harder than it looks. Props to the refs....in roller derby!"

At first glance I thought maybe Stew Ceus had injured his hand when I saw him take a goal kick while holding a large burgundy wrap at practice. And then it was obvious that he was having a hard time trying to get his warmup top off over his 'keeper gloves. Our equipment manager was quick to the spot. After a second trying to softly remove it, he and Stew pulled in opposite directions until it came off.

Last night Colombia defeated Mexico 2-0 in a friendly played in Miami. Today I asked Rapids and former Colombian National Team midfielder Jaime Castrillon if he aims to get back on his country's squad. He says his only concentration right now is to do well with the Rapids, and then who knows if that will help him get back in the mix for his country.

Jaime has scored five goals with the Colombia national team, and you might be surprised to learn what two of those goals have in common with the Rapids.

Goal #1: July 17, 2005. The opener for Colombia in a 2-1 win over Mexico in the 2005 CONCACAF Gold Cup Quarterfinals in Houston's Reliant Stadium, thus eliminating Mexico from the tournament.

Rapids forward Omar Cummings today helped the Jamaican national team defeat host New Zealand 3-2 out in Auckland, New Zealand.

From the video highlights we see that Omar assisted on Tramaine Jones' goal in the 53rd minute with a nicely weighted through ball which Stewart hammered home.

According to the Jamaican Observer,Omar played 65 minutes before he was replaced by Navion Boyd, who would go on to scored Jamaica's third goal.

And here's odd note to Stewart. He was on the same flight with Omar that left LA for New Zealand last Saturday. Once they landed, apparently Tramaine forgot he had brought an apple with him, and was consecuently fined for not declaring the 'risk goods' upon landing. The Jamaican Observer has this story, stating the Jamaican National Team lawyer said an appeal 'would be fruitless.' No mention if the pun was intended: HERE'S THE STORY.

Before the team departed for Hawaii, Oscar Pareja had invited fellow Colombian midfielder Andres Sarmiento as to train with the group. El Michi, as he's known in Colombia, has now returned to his former club in South America, with a positive experience of his week in Colorado and towards Pareja and assistant coach Wilmer Cabrera.

"Training with that club was a great pleasure for me in my career," he told Vanguardia.com. "(Pareja and Cabrera) were kind with me and made me feel like a compatriot. My relation with them is very good."

Forward Andre Akpan made an astute observation the other day on twitter that got us thinking. Are there other players who look like people we've seen - whether other celebrities or just people down the street?

The Hawaiian Islands Invitational hosted all four teams in the tournament at the Starlight Waikiki Luau on Wednesday evening. A nice traditional Hawaiian dinner was followed by a live show. At one point the dancers went around and grabbed one player from Rapids - Stew Ceus, and a player from Busan and brought them on stage to dance. Imagine what the other teams might have thought of the Rapids when they saw the huge Stew up there. CLICK HERE FOR MORE PHOTOS.

The skills competition continued after Wednesday's practice inside Aloha Stadium. Today is was the Crossbar Challenge. It's very simple: kick a ball from 20 yards and try to hit the crossbar. The team that hit it most wins. It was funny to see how many guys hit the bar while goofing around, but then...well, here you go:

Yesterday we told you about the competition the guys are involved in this week. It's an off-shoot of a game that Oscar was part of during preseasons with Dallas. In those days they called it Survivor, because the teams of two would be eliminated at every challenge. There are no eliminations in this Rapids version - only point accumulations, with the team that wins the most challenges taking the prize. As such, there's no name for this yet. Maybe you can suggest some?

Anyway, we realized we hadn't told you how the teams are split:

Pablo's team: Tyrone, Jaime, Eddie, Tony, Stew, and Brian.

Jeff's team: Ross, Scott, Ian, Davy, Kohei, and Luis.

Matt's team: Omar, Kosuke, Andre, Josh, Dillon, and Joel.

Drew's team: Marvell, Wells, Joseph, Steven, Quincy, and George.

The coaching staff made the teams, but on the first day each team had to select one player to trade to another team. Jeff's team traded Brian to Pablo's team, with Pablo's team sending Kohei to Jeff's team. Matt's team traded Steven to Drew's team in exchange for Joel.

As you see in the post below, Drew's team won the Header's competition. The next challenge was trivia, which took place during the team dinner.

Myself and our PR Director David Lindholm were asked to come up with a mixture of trivia questions. We thought that we'd be asking the same questions to the group, and which ever team had the most correct would win. But the coaches wanted the guys to have to call out the answers, knowing that when they'd get one wrong the other teams would laugh, etc.

Well, this presented a challenge for us. Now we were tasked with deciding which questions to ask each team - and of course, some teams felt cheated when they got questions they didn't know and others got easier one. We tried to make it even, asking each team a question about players from the Deep Thoughts videos, or Hawaii fun facts, or general sports trivia. But inevitably, even when we tried to throw a team a bone, they'd get the question wrong.

At the end, Jeff's team won it, answering correctly on all but one. Pablo's team took second place, followed by Drew's, and then Matt's.